Today (or tonight, depending of your timezone) lucky people in North-America and part of Asia could watch one of the most beautiful shows known in nature, the so-called Bloody Moon – ie, a lunar total eclipse. In case you wonder, lunar eclipses can be seen everywhere the event takes place – that is, half of the Earth not in daylight – and this makes them different from solar eclipses, which are only visible across small portions of the globe. In astronomical terms, the lunar eclipse only occurs at full Moon, when the earth transits between the Sun and Moon, projecting its shadow (penumbral or umbral) on our satellite.
Given that different degrees of coverage are possible, there are also different types of eclipses possible – penumbral, partial and total. If like me you were not blessed with this opportunity, you could still watch it live at Sloosh, which I recommend anyway for the following ones.
Yes because, even if you lose this eclipse, more are to come soon. October 2014 was just the second of four “bloody” eclipses set to take place this year and the next. This rather rare event is known as the tetrad. In this case the moon is completely covered by the Earth’s umbral shadow for four eclipses in a row, instead of having only partial eclipses, where our satellite would fall in the outer penumbra. The red color is due to the fact that sometimes light seeps into Earth’s shadow and makes the Moon look bloody. How charming.
In case you want to make sure not to lose any of the future ones, and watch them in person, you may start tracking them. Good move. But take your time: opportunities abound. Just to give you an idea, during the five millennium period -1999 to +3000 (2000 BCE to 3000 CE), Earth will experience 12064 lunar eclipses. Not convinced? Look at this table:
(Source: NASA)
and make sure to bookmark this NASA Eclipse website for all your bloody moon needs.